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the gasping became shouting and cheering andyelling and catcalling because on the balcony with blood streaming down his face and a thing made of thorns pushed back into the side of his head, my son came wearing the purple robe of a king, which seemed to hang on his shoulders in a way that made me understand that his hands were tied behind his back. There were soldiers all around him. The crowd began to laugh and roar as the soldiers pushed him around on the balcony. I could sense from the way he responded to being pushed that something had happened to weaken him. He seemed beaten down, almost resigned. As soon as Pilate spoke again, the crowd began to interrupt him, but he demanded that he be heard.
    ‘Behold this man!’ he said.
    At the front and, I noticed, all around the edges of the crowd, the chief priests began to lead the people in shouting: ‘Crucify him, crucify him!’ Pilate once more demanded silence. He moved closer to my son to hold him steady and prevent the soldiers from pushing him. He called to the chief priest: ‘Take ye him and crucify him, for I find no fault in him.’ And one of the chief priests shouted: ‘We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he calls himself the Son of God!’ Once more Pilate withdrew and ordered the prisoner to be taken back with him. I noticed as he turned – and I could see his face clearly – that he looked at the crowd with fear and puzzlement. Although itseemed at this point that Pilate was considering the idea of releasing him, I realize now that I was alone in letting that hope linger. Everyone else knew that something was being played out for the sake of the future, that nothing mattered now except the killing. So when they returned again and Pilate shouted, ‘Behold your king!’ it did nothing but enrage the crowd. All around they shouted the words ‘Away with him, away with him, crucify him!’ as though these words if put into action would mean infinite joy and pleasure, a sense of plenty and fulfilment. When Pilate roared again, ‘Shall I crucify your king?’ it was only as you would throw a stick to a dog. It was a game they seemed to be playing as they answered: ‘We have no king but Caesar.’ Then he was delivered by Pilate to the crowd and the crowd was fully prepared; each one of them would have personally helped to organize the suffering had they been called upon. We edged slowly and with difficulty to the side so that we were ahead of a group which had formed, with men yelping and shouting greetings to their friends, and a sense that everybody’s blood was filled with venom, a venom which came in the guise of energy, activity, shouting, laughing, roaring instructions as they paved the way for a grim procession to a hill beyond.
    As we pushed our way to the front and tried to make sure that we were not separated from one another, each of us in our own way must havelooked like the rest of those present, it must have seemed that we too were hungry with excitement at a glorious duty being performed, that someone who claimed to be king should be mocked and paraded and fully humiliated before being put to a painful death on a hill so that all could see him as he died. And it was strange too that the fact that my shoes hurt me, that they were not made for this bustle and this heat, preyed on my mind sometimes as a distraction from what was really happening.

    I gasped when I saw the cross. They had it ready, waiting for him. It was too heavy to be carried and so they made him drag it through the crowd. I noticed how he tried to remove the thorns from around his head a number of times, but the efforts did not succeed and seemed instead to make them further push themselves into the skin and into the bone of his skull and his forehead. Each time he lifted his hands to see if he could ease the pain of this, some men behind him grew impatient and they came with clubs and whips to press him forward. For a time he seemed to forget all pain as he